This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
It's Different When We Do It, Chapter 27
or
Did I Just Get Trolled?
tw: old news, unapologetic whataboutism
Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have a free essay at the (reportedly centrist!) Foreign Affairs: "The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown." (Archive link.) You may notice the URL has "trump" in it, despite that word not appearing in the title. Curious.
But wait--who are Steve Levitsky and Lucan Way? After all, one can scarcely throw a cursor across a website these days without hitting, say, six or seven hyperlinks to "think pieces" about Trump, fascism, fascist Trumpism, or even Trumpist fascism. But never fear--this is no Average Andy/Joe Sixpack collaboration. This is professional work by a team of scholars whose most famous contribution to the canon of political scholarship is the term "competitive authoritarianism." What, you may ask, is competitive authoritarianism? Read on!
Steve Levitsky, according to his employer (Harvard University, naturally), is a
His focus is not exclusive--he also writes on Israel policy while calling himself a "lifelong Zionist" (admittedly, in an article endorsing something like BDS)--but his interest in Latin America is apparently more than skin-deep:
Lucan Way is no less distinguished. Well, maybe a litte less--the University of Toronto is not even the Harvard of Canada, much less the Harvard of, well, Harvard. But his title--his title! He is literally a Distinguished Professor of Democracy. Where Levitsky's focus is Latin America, however, Way's might best be described as "Cold War and Cold War adjacent." He credits at least some of that interest to family ties to historical events:
This is an academic power couple, right here. Get one expert on authoritarianism in the New World, one on authoritarianism in the Old World, and baby, you've got a stew going! A book stew. An article stew. A bottomless cornucopia of cosmopolitan political commentary and analysis. Their 2010 text, "Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War," focuses on democratization (or its lack) under authoritarian regimes. David Waldner gave a blurb:
So: you've literally written the book on how democracies are (or are not) born. What are you going to do next? No, no, you're not going to Disneyland--you're going to witness the election of Donald Trump and stop telling people that you study the birth of democracies, but instead the death of democracies. From the Amazon page for Levitsky's (but not Way's) How Democracies Die:
That's the preliminaries. This week, Levitsky and Way published an article, and I have to say, I found it... kinda convincing? Except, I couldn't help but Notice some things that gave me pause. The thesis of the piece, as I mentioned, was that the United States is headed toward "competitive authoritarianism." The article provides a small explainer:
(As an aside, Way seems to think India is doing alright, actually? Not sure where that fits in with the above but, co-authored pieces do sometimes result in these little puzzles.)
What actually struck me first about this description was my memory of posters here in the Motte discussing "Brazilification," the process by which the U.S. is, as a result of economics, immigration, and identity politics, gradually adopting the political norms of South and Central American nations. But my experience has been that it is usually more conservative, even arguably nationalist people expressing this concern. While Levitsky and Way do not use the term "Brazilification," they definitely seem to be placing the United States on that trajectory.
They elaborate on the problem at length:
This is where I started to wonder, just a little, whether I was being trolled. While Trump's second term has indeed set a record pace for executive orders, Joe Biden's early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders was a greater departure from the norm. Most readers here will be well-acquainted with the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Many will also be aware of the time regulators inappropriately targeted the NRA. Conservative media outlets faced expensive defamation lawsuits (losing some, winning others). The fit with the Biden administration just seems too close in this paragraph, to be pure coincidence... but what am I supposed to conclude from that? Am I supposed to be doing a Straussian reading?
The piece continues:
Republicans have long complained against the weaponization of government against conservatives, and Democrats have long ignored those complaints. Whether it's a county clerk jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses or the throw-the-book-at-them attitude toward January 6th protesters, conservatives regularly find the scales of justice thumbed against their interests. Similarly-situated Democrats need fear no prosecution at all.
Levitsky and Way have more to say about this sort of thing:
Tax evasion, you say? As for minor violations of arcane rules and rarely enforced regulations, well, the whole "Trump committed a felony" charade in New York was recognized well in advance as "novel" and "built on an untested legal theory."
The argument continues!
Why would the Republican Party embrace the idea that America's institutions have been corrupted by left-wing ideologies? After all, just 63% of senior executives in government posts are Democrats; only 58% of public school teachers identify as Democrat; fully 3.4% of journalists identify as Republicans, and the ratio of liberal to conservative college professors is a measly 17 to 1!
I guess "believing facts about the ideological makeup of our country's institutions" qualifies as authoritarian, now?
There's more to the article--I invite you to read it. But maybe some of you want to ask, in total exasperation, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Maybe none! I am not here to do apologetics for Trump. I was just really struck by the idea that this article could have been written, almost word for word, about Biden, or even Obama. Maybe Bush! Maybe others--FDR for sure, right? But I can find no evidency of Levitsky or Way ever actually noticing, or worrying, about American competitive authoritarianism, until Trump. They think he's special. I don't think he's special! I think that, so far, he has actually committed far fewer of the sins on their list, than Biden did. That doesn't mean I endorse Trump's actions, so much as I am confused that a couple of highly-credentialed experts on the matter only seem to recognize American authoritarianism when it is coming from their right (or, more accurately, even when it might eventually be coming from their right).
Aside from that, I don't see any obvious problems with the picture that they paint. Having pundits on both sides of the aisle say similar things about our nation's political trajectory serves to increase my worry that "Brazilification" might be a real thing, and makes me wonder how quickly it might happen, and how seriously I should take the possibility.
(Insert butterfly meme: is this authoritarianism? Insert spaceman meme: always has been.)
Some time ago, I sat in on a tenure-track sociology job talk. The candidate researched something about "universal human rights" through examining UN declarations. I pay a lot of attention to definitions, and I remember that this candidate did not define "universal human rights" during the talk yet talked about the study of UN declarations through a framework that assumed that "universal human rights" had some particular meaning. During Q&A I tried to get some clarification on the matter:
"What, exactly, makes something a 'universal human right'?", I asked.
The candidate replied that a right is universal if it's applicable to everyone.
So I followed up, "For example, would it be a 'universal human right' to save one's soul through worship Jesus Christ in the one-true-way of Catholic faith?"
The candidate replied, "You mean the right to religion? Yes, the right to religion would be a universal human right."
And I said, "No, I mean specifically the right to save one's soul through, specifically, converting and adhering to Catholic faith."
The candidate, showing some confusion: "But that's specifically a Catholic perspective..."
And I replied, "But it's nonetheless universal. A devout Catholic truly believes that the only way for any human being to save their immortal soul from eternal damnation is by converting to Catholic faith, and, out of sheer compassion for all fellow human beings, declares the universal human right to convert and adhere to Catholicism."
"I'd have to think about that," said the candidate, but I have clearly monopolized enough of Q&A time, another colleague jumped in with a different question, and the discussion moved on.
Later, in a more informal setting and without the candidate, I was chatting with some of my colleagues about the job talk and my question. Some thought that it was indeed an interesting and important question, whether we can define 'universal human rights' without supposing a particular framework of values. But the most common response was: Look, we all know what he means by 'universal human rights', and editors in sociology journals know what he means, and reviewers know what he means, so it doesn't matter that he defined the terms so poorly as to include the Inquisition, because it will in no way impede his publication record.
(This was the tenure-track position where the sociology department deliberately cast a wide net to diversify the research within the department. I asked if that means they are looking for a conservative candidate, and we all had a laugh.)
To bring it back to "competitive authoritarianism": I am not at all surprised that two social scientists swimming in the liberal-left bubbles of Harvard and U-Toronto would fail to consider how their abstract terms for "competitive authoritarian" techniques instantiate from a conservative perspective. The specific examples you bring up may have not even crossed their path, like the IRS investigations into politically conservative non-profits a few years back, though more likely the authors don't feel like the examples fit their "competitive authoritarian" framework because the authors agree with the aims of those instances of techniques--they therefore feel simply like the correct application of law. Prosecution of J6 participants? Surely it's right and proper to prosecute insurrection. Same for that county clerk who refuses to follow the new marriage law. Same for going after conservative news--must stamp out misinformation. It takes someone outside of that bubble to notice the similarities.
A big part of The Motte's value is giving cross-bubble perspectives, a place where someone posts "Just keep swimming", someone else goes: "Running gets you further", and yet another pipes in: "Fly, you fools!!"
"Yes, that is a subset of the right to one's religion. If you have come to the conclusion that Catholicism is true, wish to join the Catholic Church, and they wish to welcome you as a baptised and confirmed member, you have the right not to have that interfered with."
Catholic, quite literally, means universal in the sense that everyone ought to be a member, and to put aside other religions. Starting assumptions matter, that was the point of his example.
Now, you and I have quite different starting assumptions. But from my starting assumptions allowing other religions to proselytize undermines the universal human right to salvation through the Catholic church, and error does not have natural rights at all. It might incidentally be tolerated to avoid a worse evil(eg false conversions at gunpoint), but you simply happen to believe that Catholicism is not true and that the UN universal declaration of human rights are a reflection of natural law.
More options
Context Copy link
That's how the candidate first took it, too: if someone reaches a decision to convert to Catholicism, don't interfere.
But from a perspective of, say, a devout 16-century Catholic, the "if" part is not there: If you come to the conclusion that you don't need to convert to Catholicism, you are deeply mistaken (and probably being lied to by the devil), and your immortal soul is still in danger. That perspective is what drove so many missionaries to risk their lives in the Americas and Africa. That perspective stroke the fires of Inquisition: what matter a few minutes of physical agony if it helps you see the light?
But all I was trying to determine is whether this perspective fits the candidate's definition of "universal human right" as "a right that's applicable to any person". I think it does.
I think I see where you're coming from. I suspect that the candidate may have been grasping at the concept of universalisability, in the Kantian sense. (See "You Kant Dismiss Universalizability", Slate Star Codex, May 2014.)
Catholicism and Protestantism are the type specimens for freedom of religion in Western political thought, precisely because 16th- and 17th-century Catholics believed that 'everyone has the right to save their souls through converting to Catholicism, adhering to Catholic faith, and worshiping Jesus Christ according to the teachings of the Holy Roman Church', and 16th- and 17th-century Protestants believed, just as strongly, that 'everyone has the right to save their souls through converting to Protestantism, adhering to Protestant faith, and worshiping Jesus Christ according to the principle of sola scriptura'; they also both believed that they had the right to impose the true religion by force on those who did not accept it willingly.
This culminated in the Thirty Years' War, which caused a six-foot decrease in altitude for 4-12 million people; seeking to avoid further bloodshed, Europe and its descendants arrived at today's conventional understanding of religious freedom; that if Mary believes in Catholicism and Elizabeth believes in Protestantism, Mary has the right to be Catholic without interference from Elizabeth, and Elizabeth has the right to be Protestant without interference from Mary; each doing unto the other as she would have the other do unto her. (This is the 'reciprocal liberty' of the Quakers, described in Albion's Seed.)
Good point: at least, if I were to go back in time and steelman my own question, I would use 'universalizability' to convey my notion, despite the ugliness of the term. I mean, it has both the -alize suffix that turns a noun into a verb, and then the -ability suffix to turn it back to a noun.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But Catholicism is a monotheist faith, which denies that any other religion has validity and it is the one true path to salvation.
To get away from the analogy, it would be like say that Wokism is a tolerant and diverse sociological lense, but it doesn't consider any other interpretation to disparate impact other than racism.
It is trivially easy to assert that your parochial views are actually universal unpartisan principles. Or 'just being a good person', as I've heard it being told.
That was the idea behind the question. The catholic part was a proxy for the presuppositions of any world view. What happens when you give someone the right to choose but only if they accept the presuppositions that lead to that conclusion you want them to draw?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I feel like this is getting at why the political divide has become the way it is: a generation ago I suspect even lay members of the public would understand and (broadly, if not uniformly) agree on "universal human rights", for Americans probably citing either the Constitution or Declaration of Independence. Today, the ivory tower definition has moved on at least a bit, and while the academics probably agree with each other, the lay public has started noticing when The Powers That Be have tweaked the definitions to mismatch the populace and they don't feel like they've been consulted or heard on how it impacts them through issues like refugee status or (youth) gender medicine.
More options
Context Copy link
I obviously didn't sit in on this talk, but when someone says "Universal Human Rights" in reference to the UN, they probably specifically mean the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is a specific document.
As always on the topic of authoritarianism, I have to beat my usual drum. It is unlikely for someone to swim in a bubble so enclosed that they wouldn't notice the covid-related authoritarianism. It is exceptionally unlikely if those bubbles are US academia rather than red state small towns or Sweden. More likely is that they agree with that particular kind of authoritarianism.
I'm a mathematician, so I get antsy when someone doesn't clarify their definitions of key terms. I would have accepted something like "By universal human rights I mean whatever was declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948". But no, this candidate was presenting a framework that (and I won't do it justice here) kind of assumes some platonic version of "universal human rights" that international bodies like UN can discover, even if imperfectly, and this framework was intended to model the process of such a discovery. So understanding what this Platonic stuff is was kind of important, I thought.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link